Cloud Cuckoo Land
Ratings273
Average rating4.3
I had to put this one down because of it's portrayal of neurodivergence. Life is too short to spend time on books that perpetuate harmful myths about autism.
Een deels verloren gegane Griekse fabel over een herder die graag naar de “city in the sky” wil (“Cloud Cuckoo Land”), verbindt de verhalen van de vijf hoofdpersonen over drie tijdsperiodes.
““Ouch, ouch,” I cried, “my lip!” The fishermen had eyes like lamps and hands like fins and penises like trees and they lived on an island inside the whale with a mountain of bones at its center. “Unhook me,” I said. “I'm hardly a meal for men as strong as you. Besides, I'm not even a fish at all!” The fishermen looked at each other and one said, “Is that you talking or is that the fish?” They carried me to a cave high on the mountain where a disheveled castaway wizard had lived for four hundred years and taught himself how to speak fish. “
In de 15e eeuw leert een weeskind (in een klooster in Constantinopel) zich in het geheim lezen aan de hand van een gestolen exemplaar van de fabel - gestolen met behulp van een ossendrijver die deel uitmaakt van het door de Ottomanen gestuurde leger om Constantinopel in te nemen.
“Anna and her older sister, Maria, sleep in a one-window cell barely large enough for a horsehair pallet. Between them they own four copper coins, three ivory buttons, a patched wool blanket, and an icon of Saint Koralia that may or may not have belonged to their mother. Anna has never tasted sweet cream, never eaten an orange, and never set foot outside the city walls. Before she turns fourteen, every person she knows will be either enslaved or dead.“
In de 20e eeuw probeert Zeno Ninis een toneelvoorstelling van de fabel te organiseren voor kinderen in de plaatselijke bibliotheek. Tegelijkertijd is de uil-minnende puber Seymour onder invloed geraak van eco-terroristen en wordt op pad gestuurd om de bibliotheek op te blazen.
““Mr. Ninis?” Rachel is tapping Zeno's shoulder. Her red hair is pulled back in braided pigtails and snow has melted to droplets on her shoulders and her eyes are wide and bright. “You built all this? For us?”“
Tot slot, ergens in de 22e eeuw wordt Konstance door haar vader voorgelezen uit de fabel. Ze is aan boord van een ruimteschip op weg naar een verre planeet, maar is al gauw de enige overlever na het uitbreken van een virus.
Niet alleen de fabel is een verbindende factor, ook blijken de verhalen uit 20e en 22e eeuw aan elkaar gekoppeld. Zoals bekend hou ik wel van dit soort geconstrueerde boeken, en deze viel daarin niet tegen.
Contains spoilers
I enjoyed the premise of the story where all these characters, hundreds of years apart, are connected by a single story, written many years ago, nearly lost to time.
The pacing felt very uneven, with about the beginning 40% feeling extremely slow and dragged on. Each character’s stories were unique and but not necessarily interesting. There was a theme of loss of childhood throughout each characters’ backgrounds which makes sense why the interwoven story of a paradise so appealing to each character.
Konstance’s was most interesting to me. What she learned really ties all the story lines together. Omeir & Anna’s stories seemed very isolated from the others and detracted from how each character was linked with the another. Maybe I missed something. 🤷♀️
I couldn’t decide whether I liked the book overall. Felt quite average and felt much of it could have been pared down without much impact to the overall story.
“Ciudad de Las Nubes” es una lectura entretenida y bastante fácil de seguir, bueno para esos momentos en los que solo quieres relajarte con una historia.
Me gustaron mas dos de las historias internas que en si la historia principal. Aunque la trama principal es interesante, encontré que estas dos historias secundarias tenían un encanto especial y me resultaron más cautivadoras. Doerr logra entrelazar estas narrativas de una manera que enriquece la experiencia de lectura, haciendo que cada página sea un placer.
“Ciudad de Las Nubes” es un libro que recomendaría a cualquiera que busque una lectura amena y bien escrita. ¡Definitivamente vale la pena darle una oportunidad!
I loved how all the strands tied together but I didn't love the jumping around. Cool concept and great writing but All the Light is still my favorite by far.
Amazing and beautiful and sad. I don't think I'm in a good place right now for reading a book that is this heavy, but it is astonishing and impressively complex and stunningly creative. Perhaps I will come back to it when I can savor it without feeling weighed down.
I can do nothing but gush about this love letter to stories and books. I have read reviews picking apart the ambition and the cost of the ambition with supposed lost tension. I have read the reviews that there is too much ham-fisted foisting of the underlying message of the importance of stories, and libraries and reading, etc. I have read the detractors who have determined Cloud Cuckoo Land too sweeping and too self-involved and therefore, too dismissive of the narratives that should have greater impact, like the breadth of the historically significant battle rattling the days of Omeir and Anna. I disagree.
Doerr's characters are vivid and their realities shape the story and isn't that the whole point in the first place?
All of the stories and timelines worked for me and I wasn't frustrated to leave one over another and came to be invested in them all, in nearly equal parts - which is truly saying something.
In my mind, it is a greater work than his Pulitzer-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, because it treads previously untended ground and uses imagination to reveal all the greater good of humanity, or the greater good that could be, even through the sadness and tumult and struggle that plagues all life. I loved it.
For more of my reviews, check out my blog.
Books about books have always struck a chord with me, and Cloud Cuckoo Land was no exception to that rule. At the very heart of this story, we have a lost ancient Greek text whose remnants leave echoes through history. This story takes place across thousands of years — we see two characters at the sacking of Constantinople right around 1500, then we see another during the Korean War, another in the early 2010's, then another way in the future, after Earth has burned and is no longer inhabitable. Throughout all of these people's lives the tale of Cloud Cuckoo Land rings loudly. We have some characters who use the story as a means to carry on with their lives, others who's life work it is to translate the text, others still who do whatever they can to protect the text itself.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is an astonishing love note to humanity, and our need to create and belong beyond all else. I thoroughly enjoyed this, but I can see how others might find it boring. It is a history book, peeking backwards at our fore bearer's lives. There are sections where nothing much happens — sections where you get the chance to breathe the story in a bit more. I loved the pieces in Constantinople, I loved seeing how people must have lived back then. I love history — I always have — and Cloud Cuckoo Land hits a lot of my buttons in such a good way.
I really don't want to say too much about the plot itself, because I really do believe this is one of those books that you have to discover as it unfolds. This is not one you want to go into with too much information. It's better left a bit mysterious.
If you have any interest in history, anthropology, or just love a good book about books, please check this one out.
The story was amazing. However, it took at least 100 pages for it to start and maybe another 100 pages to understand how these seperate stories might be connected.
From then on it was, almost to the end, pretty strong content-wise but reading it felt like a nightmare and like 500 years or so passed.
I'm giving it three stars because I don't regret reading it but I'm not sure if I would recommend!!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
Just a few pacing issues that, honestly, I think have more to do with me than the book. This was fantastic and I'm still recovering.
Incredible. I might start reading speculative, historical fiction epics because of this book. I cried, I laughed, I gasped. Incredible.
I was initially apprehensive about reading this considering that the top liked review was a one star, but it seemed to keep calling out to me.
Needless to say, I loved it. It was beautiful.
A story about a story that lasts lifetimes and all the people it touched. How it effected their lives, and how their lives, in turn, helped it (and each other) endure.
“What's so beautiful about a fool is that a fool never knows when to give up.”
Humans are not good or evil but a secret third thing (stupid).
The foolish perseverance of humanity and how our legacy as a species lies securely in the stories that we keep alive.
It even managed to somehow catch me offguard with a fairly common twist! (A testament to how engrossed I was in the writing.)
Moral is: Don't let other people's reviews discourage you from reading a book. Not all stories are for everyone, you learn along the way though which stories are for you.
The story really starts 500 pages in. The relevant characters interact and the switch of perspective is great. Before that, it is everything that is hot in literature right now. Multiple storylines over thousands of years. You could put a family drama mystery into the story and it would be everything that has 5 stars right now. If you like that, this is your book.
Overall I liked this book, but I thought it was boring. I don???t regret the time I spent reading this book, but I am also glad that I skipped whole paragraphs and ends of pages. This book is an experience, but I wouldn???t recommend it to my friends.
It took incredible writing skill and hubris to weave the four short stories together with the thinnest of threads. Everyone is dumped out of their descriptive quagmires into their respective endings without any semblance of conclusions. I didn???t learn anything because there was nothing at stake. One character completely changed where she was in the universe and nothing happened after that.
Thanks for reading
A lot of thought went into this book and it shows. At another time I might have been more in a place to absorb the complexity, but as my final read of the year, it had my head spinning a little bit.
Following a number of timelines in the past, present, and future, we are introduced to a handful of characters that represent their time period. What do they have in common? Ancient stories and text. More than anyone else it seems, the story focuses Zeno. We follow him before and during the Korean war as well as the more modern-day setting of 2020.
To say there is a lot going on in this book is an understatement. The flow was not fantastic jumping across so many characters and time periods and a lot gets lost in the lengthy descriptions and slow-paced, not super eventful plot. I found it thought-provoking, sure, but not altogether exciting. I zoned out toward the end and I don't feel like I missed anything with my lack of attention to it.
Overall, I have mixed feelings. There were parts I enjoyed but others where I was bored and trudging through. Even though the chapters are short, the book itself could have been shorter. The beginning was strong but fizzled out somewhere in the middle. Ultimately, this is the kind of book that will very much come down to personal preference. I appreciate the thoughts and ideas presented, I only wish they could have been slightly more to the point and better organized.
I have so much trouble rating this one. Powerful, beautiful, but sad.
On the one hand, this is well done. The characters are so real. The challenges they face are believable. The separate but dependent plots are interesting and creative.
On the other hand, the stories are all depressing; aside from a few moments for readers to catch their breath, this is a downer. I felt it in my heart.
This feels like a book you'd read and analyze in school - and it does require some attention to follow the 6 stories, but it's so freaking rewarding. I know some people really dislike Anthony Doerr and his slow-burn / descriptive style, but I LOVE it. It's so easy to fall into the world and truly love the characters with this style.
This story follows 5 characters in 3 different timelines, while mirroring the 24 folios of Aethon's story of finding Cloud Cuckoo Land in 24 chapters. That might sound complex, but the whole thing points to the importance of persevering stories and knowledge. Personally, I loved this one and the audiobook really helped me to separate the characters and timelines.
If you're not ready to really pay attention, or maybe take a few notes along the way, this book is not for you. If you want a good read for a book group or to discuss in a class - this is absolutely beautiful.
I really liked several parts of this story. But that was also the problem with it -It had too many parts. My favorite was the future world in an interstellar ship. But there were also too many characters, and I felt myself having to write down names to keep track of them. And there were several people that just never seemed to weave into the story. I started this audiobook many months prior to finishing.
How lucky have I been to finish this year out with so many amazing 5 star books? I feel like I never rate 5 stars anymore, but this one certainly merits it.
I'll start by saying that in the beginning this book is work. There is unpeeling to do, and a lot of attention that needs to be paid. However, it picks up momentum and by the end I couldn't put it down.
This was lovely and tender. Inspired and inspiring. It felt like books within a book about books. I loved it.
“Sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.”
No other word to describe this but simply, wow. A beautiful story about the power of stories, the power of connection, and strength that can be found in our darkest hour. I haven't felt this moved by a story since One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it'll be a couple of days until I can digest it, but this is a simply can't miss story.
The way I screamed “I finally finished it” when I was done...this book is fine. There are some really great small storylines I enjoyed. It definitely could have been 150 pages shorter. 3.5 and rounded up.
Nad ostateczną oceną jeszcze myślę (4.5, więc nigdy nie wiem, ile dać wtedy gwiazdek), ale ludzie! Co to była za książka!
Sięgnęłam po tę powieść bez większych oczekiwań, choć wiadomo, pewne mimo wszystko się tliły. W końcu autor za swą poprzednią powieść otrzymał Pulitzera. Gdy zaczęłam jednak czytać, czułam się zagubiona w gąszczu liter, w labiryncie pięciu z pozoru niepowiązanych ze sobą historii i bohaterów. Warto było jednak doczytać tę opowieść.